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Thanks to Wikileaks (not work safe!), we now know that the UK did, in fact, sell the Storm Shadow cruise missile — an MTCR category I system if I’ve ever seen one — to Saudi Arabia.
LtG Abdulrahman Al-Faisal, Commander of the Royal Saudi Air Force, confirmed the sale to US Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro in October 2009.
Regular readers know that I have long believed that the UK sold the Storm Shadow cruise missile to Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that Storm Shadow ought to be considered a Category I MTCR system.
The circumstantial evidence was compelling: A photographer in April 2007 captured a Saudi aircraft carrying a Storm Shadow cruise missile in the UK. (The aircraft was in the UK for an upgrade under the Tornado Sustainment Program so this was sort of a test-drive.) When BAE announced “significant incremental orders totalling £1.2bn” in late 2009, most industry observers concluded the Storm Shadow deal had been done.
Still, neither the Saudi or UK governments had officially confirmed the sale. And the UK media was strangely uninterested in reporting a violation of the UK’s admittedly voluntary commitments under the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).
A Saudi official, however, was perfectly happy to inform the US about the impending sale, largely in the hopes of pressuring the US to include an American cruise missile, the SLAM-ER, in the F-15 package it was negotiating. In October 2009, LtG Abdulrahman Al-Faisal, Commander of the Royal Saudi Air Force, told Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro that Saudi Arabia that he “loved the F-15s but without the best weapons and full capability, it’s not much help.”
Faisal then made clear that “the best weapons and full capability” meant the SLAM-ER. As part of his pitch, Faisal pointed out that the UK has already agreed to sell Saudi Arabia the Storm Shadow, which is much more lethal than SLAM-ER:
Saudi Arabia, LtG Al-Faisal commented, now needs an aircraft to counter its new main threat, which is from Iran. Yemen is also a growing challenge, which is why the RSAF is seeking small diameter bombs. He also mentioned the SLAM-ER missile, noting that the U.S. has provided these to Korea. Saudi Arabia, he said, will be acquiring the Storm Shadow from the UK, a missile with a longer range and greater lethality than the SLAM-ER – making it hard for the RSAF to understand the U.S. logic in withholding the SLAM-ER. [Emphasis added.]
As far as I can tell, the Obama Administration did not offer SLAM-ER to Saudi Arabia. I have to imagine the folks at Boeing are pretty sore about that. And who can blame them? Although I agree with the principle of not selling SLAM-ER in the Middle East, what’s the point if, as Faisal told Shapiro, if “Britain, France, and others are giving us everything we want.”
Jeffrey Lewis • Saudi Storm Shadow Sale Confirmed
